PsychologiesPsychology
“Try to understand me”, “put yourself in my shoes”... What do we mean when we say this? And why is it difficult even for our loved ones to fulfill our request?
Text: Evgenia Danilova
“Last year I tried downhill skiing for the first time,” recalls 40-year-old Tatyana. – I slid down a small hill a couple of times. And then my husband put me in a chair lift and lifted me up a tall mountain. They say, now get out of here. I looked down and my head was spinning. She begged: “You go ahead, but I won’t go. Scary!" He started to get angry. Me again: “Imagine yourself in my place - this is my first time skiing!” But he couldn’t understand what I was afraid of: “Only by stepping over your fear can you learn to skate well.” He insisted and threatened to leave me alone on the mountain. As a result, I burst into tears, unfastened my skis and began to descend in my boots ... "
When we suffer, we look for sympathy: it can bring us at least some relief! “In the everyday sense, “take my place” means “try to take into account my circumstances,” “try to look at the situation through my eyes,” explains family psychotherapist Katerina Demina. “By saying this, we are trying to communicate that we have feelings and want them to be taken into account.”
Skin of your opponent
We already know that game theory studies the principles of decision making in situations with several players interacting with each other. This is when all players pursue their own goals, influence the outcome with their actions and act in conditions of limited information. Almost all conflicts in our daily lives fit this definition, and each of us is a strategist, whether he wants to be or not.
The fact that you have reached the third chapter allows us to assume that you also believe that it is better to be a good strategist than a bad one, which means it is time to focus on the first introduction necessary for developing strategic thinking. Let’s make a reservation right away: in this book we will only consider games with two players, or doubles. They are most often encountered in real life, and their solution is within our power both in principle and in a practical sense.
The truth that is important to pay attention to every time you find yourself in such a game is that in any paired conflicts, your opponent has intelligence and wants to win against you. And he understands that you understand this. In other words, in any strategic interaction you simply need to think like your opponent.
Theorists of the concept of positive thinking suggest viewing any failure as an invaluable experience. This was the advice of Ernest Shurtleff Holmes, the founder of the positivist “Science of Mind” movement. He cited Churchill as an example as a man “always rising and moving on.” After all, Churchill, who during his life repeatedly rushed from high posts and universal adoration to public contempt and the loss of all positions, was never afraid to start all over again
How to put a person in his place: step-by-step instructions
In order to put a person in his place, it is not at all necessary to raise your tone.
The culture of modern society, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired. That’s why every day we have to deal with boorish attitude on the bus, in the supermarket, especially in queues. Unfamiliar boors are, as they say, half the trouble. But what if the boor is your colleague with whom you see every single day?! The answer lies in a few steps!
Steps Description Step No. 1. Understand the situation The first thing you should do after someone tries to violate your personal boundaries is to understand the situation. Stay calm and reasonable. If possible, get alone and analyze what happened. Your further behavior directly depends on who exactly is violating your boundaries, how he does it and for what purpose. Depending on all this, you will have to choose a way to fight back. Step No. 2. Ignore So, you figured out the situation with a cool head and approximately understood why the person behaves in such an impudent manner. What should your behavior be? The best option is to ignore it. Here you don't need to depict anything. Just respond to all attempts to make friends, gossip, gain trust, etc. with silence. Act like you don't care at all. Let's say an impudent person (let's call him that) has quarreled with his superiors and is trying to turn you against the director of the company. He puts forward one argument after another and expects your nod of approval. What should you do? That's right - carefully look at the pencil and try to understand what is written in small print! Step No. 3. Smile Well, you ignored the insolent person as best you could, but he stubbornly continues to put pressure on you. Let's move on to point "B" - smile. But you can smile in different ways, right? A mocking smile will definitely not help calm down your colleague. So smile as if you were watching a cute child learning to eat with a spoon. It's funny, right? So have some fun. But remember that there should be nothing aggressive or mocking in your behavior. You might even say, “You're so funny when you're angry.” Step No. 4. “Mirror” effect Really, all the previous methods did not help calm the insolent person?! Then here's another one
It is more provocative, so you need to resort to it with extreme caution (unless, of course, you are planning to start a huge conflict with a violator of your borders). The “mirror” effect is a reflection of the behavior of the insolent
Using the example of a coworker who turns you against your boss, start doing the same. You see that a colleague has sat down at his workplace, immediately “fly up” to him and begin to actively “load” about your neighbor who is always flooding you. Ask for advice, demand sympathy and, most importantly, don’t shut up for a second. Step No. 5. Agree This method is a little softer than the previous one. It lies in the fact that you must completely agree with your annoying colleague. Yes, agree so that he has no reason to convince you or prove anything. He comes up to you with another “stone in the garden” addressed to the boss, and you tell him: “What a horror, I don’t even know how you tolerate it.” Don't let him get a word in, express your sympathy and play the role of a like-minded person. There are two possible outcomes here: either your colleague will finally leave you behind (after all, it’s not interesting to convince an already willing person) or he will cling to you even more tightly. Well, every medicine has side effects. Step #6: Play What? Where? When?" Not in the literal sense, of course. The essence of the method is to ask your opponent questions to which he can only answer “Yes” or “No”. As an option, “So you think that our boss is a terrible person?” Even if the impudent person is determined, such a specific question will most likely unsettle him. In the future, he may bypass you. Step No. 7. Frontal attack And this method is for the completely desperate. If your interlocutor has already completely driven you crazy with his “touching” stories and manipulations, go on the offensive. Calmly and confidently ask him: “Why do you think I’m interested in this?” After this, he will definitely be confused and try to disappear from your field of vision as quickly as possible.
Rule #1
It sounds like this: know how to put yourself in the other player’s shoes.
You should grasp the motives of your opponent’s behavior and his reaction to your actions in order to predict all his possible moves (calculate strategies). Without this skill, it is simply pointless to study game theory further, because without calculating your opponent’s actions, planning your own optimal move is absolutely pointless. The good news is that, consciously or not, we do this all the time. Our brains are constantly calculating and predicting the future. Another question, of course, is how rationally and effectively he does this. Over the past half century, neurophysiologists and psychologists have already proven quite meaningfully that the brain has the ability to hide all the contradictions in our consciousness, and for this it has to cheat. Consciousness tends to distort or not notice real facts, repress objects that are unpleasant for us into the subconscious, be lazy and act according to the first established attitude (for example, obeying the Halo effect) and do other cute things that can negatively affect our interaction with the environment.
The Halo Effect is the scientific explanation for why we label people and have a hard time leaving them in the future. Once we make a superficial first impression about a person, for example, whether he is good or bad, we tend to evaluate all his actions in accordance with this impression and find ourselves in a kind of captivity of our own attitude.
In business relationships, the Halo effect is a source of errors in personality assessment. After all, the observer uses only the first impression or memorable feature in assessing individuality
Why do we focus on this? When we are directly in conflict, it is difficult for us to drown out our own emotions and “walk a mile in someone else's shoes,” as the British say. That is, we all have difficulty putting ourselves in another person's shoes and properly assessing the full context of the situation from their perspective before making judgments. In the Russian language there is an equally beautiful expression “to be in someone else’s shoes.” Therefore, try to always focus your attention on this and try on your opponent’s skin as much as possible.
Just don't be silent!
This is often what happens: we don’t say “take my place,” but we simply remain silent, get angry, offended, and refuse.
As children, we did not always understand what was happening to us. We needed the kind attention and understanding of an adult in order to understand our experiences. Let’s imagine that a mother calls her child for a walk: “It’s so nice outside! All your friends are playing in the yard!” And he repeats: “I don’t want to.” Only if the mother stops insisting and instead tries to find out why he refuses, it may turn out that yesterday someone offended him on the playground, or he doesn’t want to tear himself away from an interesting game, or his stomach hurts.
Reflective games
In addition to the obvious benefits of developing this skill for social life, working on it will provide you with a serious tool for analyzing strategic interactions. By the way, one of the new complex areas of game theory is reflexive games.
The best way to understand your opponent is to walk in his shoes
We are talking here not only about analyzing what your opponent is going to do, but also about his thoughts, what you intend to do in response to his actions, etc. This is precisely “I think that he is thinking, what I think, etc.” Finding equilibria in such games is a very difficult task, the success of which is largely determined by the level of awareness and degree of creativity of the players. Here you can already talk about talent, predict the enemy’s reaction to your own non-standard strategy.
Here, too, humanity did not wait for our time to think through the problem in detail; This is especially true for the history of military art. Reflective games have been known since the times of Ancient China and Ancient Rome. It is worth mentioning the original manuscript of the oldest Chinese treatise found in 1939, which contained a catalog of 36 stratagems. The Chinese have formulated in a concise and aphoristic manner the ways out of any predicament imaginable. Currently, even comics for children are printed in China, illustrating the use of the 36 stratagems. And the compulsory school education program for the Chinese includes knowing by heart all 138 hieroglyphs, which express these stratagems. This is how much importance this huge nation attaches to the development of its own strategic thinking.
We hope that we have provided enough arguments for your thoughts in favor of the skill of thinking for another person, which is quite possible to develop through your own efforts.
The best way to understand game theory is to put it into practice. We suggest that you do not wait until the end of the book, but start training now. Here's a simple task for you: take any conflict situation from your own life and on a piece of paper in a format convenient for you, describe all the possible moves of your opponent and yours. Next we'll look at the backward induction method and use this skill by drawing a strategy tree.
How to develop empathy?
The practice of empathy helps us broaden our perspectives and thereby enrich our world with new ideas, perspectives and possibilities.
This is a key social skill that, as we have seen, allows us to listen better, understand better, and formulate better questions, three fundamental aspects of good communication. It is also one of the foundations for building strong and enriching relationships.
You can incorporate 3 simple, practical exercises into your regimen to improve your empathy.
Ask and show interest
Start any meeting or conversation with open and personalized questions: How are you? How are you at work? How's the project you started going? How was your holiday??
When showing intimacy and interest in another person, leave room for discovery and receiving.
Read theater scripts
Read theater scripts and focus on character. Look in the text for what is beyond the words; Personal history, past experiences, fears he hides, his desires and illusions, emotions close to the skin...
Select a person
Pick a person at random and try to figure out through nonverbal communication what motivates him (emotions and thoughts) to do what he does and how he does it. A good time to do this exercise is on public transport, in a cafeteria... These places are rich in scenes because they can serve to embody empathy.
